Cloudy with a Chance of Geese
In mid-March the sky was overcast and the rain, steady
but light at 7:00 a.m. I double-tied my hiking boots and zipped my rain jacket
over mismatched sweats, stuffing the left jacket pocket with tissues. On chilly
or windy days, my eyes water and my nose runs, bringing to mind Mom’s
predictable quip: “Everything’s working.”
Through the spring and summer, I take a break from my indoor
fitness course for senior citizens and switch to the outdoors, taking morning
walks on a paved hiker-biker path. Occasionally I’ll drive to a park and walk
the trails, but that’s impractical every day. It takes too much time.
I walk for my health, hoping to balance my appetite
with exercise, and I walk to train. In early June I’ll be joining a group in
England to hike in three of the country’s national parks. After spending 17
weeks on the Appalachian Trail in recent years, I know not to show up for a
hiking vacation without prior conditioning.
Ohio is flat where I live. The only hill within
walking distance is an embankment separating a shopping center from the nearby
homes. When I line it up visually, the top of that “hill” is about as high as
the gutters on the nearest two-story house. In addition to serving as a buffer
between retail and residential properties, the grassy embankment is a sometime meeting
place for geese. I hear them barking in the sky as they head somewhere and cross
my fingers it’s somewhere else. Do geese experience memory loss the way
we do? Can they forget their gathering places?
I remember how the geese land: a flock of 30 or more suddenly fluttering, hissing, honking, and heading in every direction. When they arrive, they take over, pecking at the ground and chattering like cronies in a fast-food coffee club. In past
years I have slunk by hoping not to be noticed, but geese intimidate me. Most
often their presence is my cue to make an immediate U-turn and cut my elevation
training short.
My attitude toward geese is “Live and let live.” I’ll
take ducks.
For the longest time I couldn’t tell ducks from geese,
the way as a young girl I couldn’t tell lettuce from cabbage. I now know that ducks
are not only smaller than geese; they are friendlier. I’m not
intimidated by ducks.
One day it was raining hard, so I put on my sweats, waterproof
hiking boots, and rain jacket before heading out. In hindsight, I should have
worn my rain pants, too; next time. I had to walk around puddles, and two young
ducks stood along the path. “Nice weather for you,” I said in passing.
Most days when I reach the other side of the hill, I see a lone duckling sitting next to the wet end of a drainage ditch outside
the strip mall. Where are its mother and father? Its siblings? And don’t ducks
imprint on other species in the absence of their own parents?
“We’re just friends,” I said to the duckling the first
time I saw it. “Just friends.” I didn’t want it to follow me home. I had enough
wandering geese and energetic squirrels in my yard.
The following day the duck was back, sitting alone beside
the ditch. I could hear his soft quacking as I reached the bottom of the hill
and turned around. He wasn’t afraid of me either.
Sometimes the little fellow was in the same spot, and
sometimes he was gone. One day I watched him toddle away with another duckling.
Maybe, like so many humans, he doesn’t want to go home for good. Maybe he favors
his independence or—can ducks be introverted? Maybe he likes to visit and then
get back to his alone time.
I conclude my morning walks by going over the
embankment two or three times: up one side, down the other; up that side, down
to where I began.
A few weeks into my training, spring burst onto the scene after a long Ohio winter. Forsythia bloomed, the treetops
turned pink and white with blossoms, and the grass stood lush and green
awaiting the mower. A lone bird, still as a Hallmark ornament, chirped on the
tippy-top of an evergreen tree.
I continued to pass the solitary duck on my turns. Most
days it sat in its usual spot, and I’d say, “Until next time.” Recently as I
crested the hill I looked ahead and saw only an empty stretch of grass, but then
I spied my little friend on the other side of the empty road, as though he were
waiting to cross.
Now it is the second week of May. The
grass is mowed, the walking path resurfaced. I no longer need to wear a
sweatshirt on my walks. Today I hiked over the embankment twice—four times
up and four down--without slowing my pace. My hiking trip is less than a month away.
The little bird still sings on the tippy-top of the
evergreen tree, but the duck has been gone lately. I read that it takes a baby duck 50 days to fly;
is my little friend still grounded, or has he taken to the sky? I hope he is safe. The geese have
not returned. If they do, I will find another hill to climb.
